Monday, June 18, 2007

I've seen images of bamboo bikes before, cool, yet more novelty and less performance oriented.

Then spotted this article in today's LA Times about Santa Cruz elite bike builder Craig Calfee, who started experimenting with bamboo frames after watching his "jaws of steel" pooch fail to make more than a dent in a bamboo stick.

Hes since built over 91 racing style bamboo bikes, including one used for the Hawaii Ironman.

Calfee's design caught the eye of a New York cyclist/environmentalist from the Earth Island Institute, as a potentially valuable form of transportation in developing countries. The two have been exploring areas of Africa, to assess the bike's economic and environmental benefits.

Will keep tabs on this, sounds like a grand idea......

My friends at Xtracycle have also sparked a revolution on this front, through Worldbike, bringing bicycle entrepreneurs together to design functional, low cost bikes to serve the needs of developing countries.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Everyone's doing the green thing these days, even the The Ellen Show. For her great green episode, I got to join 15 other spinners from Revolution pedaling stationary bikes rigged to power generators, as a background scene. Fun, and a crazy coincidence, as I've been chatting with Revolution about doing something similar.....

Original idea was to have us power the TV, but didn't quite turn out that way - either technical problems or lack of planning.....too bad, but it was still fun, a trip for this non-TV watcher to see the behind the scenes.

The show featured Cameron Diaz, who reminded us to turn off the water when brushing our teeth (cutting edge, ahem) and Simran Sethi from Treehugger TV and The Green. Who was wonderful as always.

Heres the whole lot of us, sharing our brief Hollywood moment.

And now....lets rig those bikes up and put those wasted spinning calories to good use!

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Bikes, like all vehicles, take some maintainance, and occasionally break down. With skills and tools, you can fix most things yourself, but some of us lack the former....(or later, or both) and hate the idea of forking out a bunch of $ for glitches we KNOW would be a snap to fix.

Bikerowave is a community-run project, a bicycle kitchen/cool DIY hangout space on the west side - a place to fix/wrench/clean your bike with guidance from a group of friendly volunteer mechanics.

They won't just fix your bike FOR you while you stand by watching dumbly, rather they will SHOW YOU HOW TO FIX YOUR OWN BIKE!

I finally made it there the other weekend, to fix a glitch on my Xtracycle.

What you can't see in this photo, somehow the only one to turn out from multiple pix snapped, is the formerly greasy chain I'm holding, my first time learning to break and degrease a chain, granted with much hand holding......

Not only was I thrilled to have my bike functioning again, having a hand in the process made it all the more gratifying.

Monday, April 23, 2007

My mom, a weekend warrior, rides her Xtracycle once a week to the Sunday farmers market, loading up w/ organic goods for the week. I've written about her before, love her weekly routine.....

This week, she was interviewed coming into the city's bike valet area, and her quote ended up closing this article on the program,

"Mary Ann Cummins, 70, has equipped her bicycle with side bags large enough to hold her artichokes, greens, broccoli and fresh Gaviota strawberries. "My God, I forgot my eggs," she said, and hastily returned her bike to an attendant."

That sounds exactly right. The part about the eggs that is.

Article made me sad for Johnnie, whose personal bike/pet watcher service has taken a hit due to the program.....I think next time I'll leave my Xtra w/ him.